9-9 Showdown

Hmm.

If that was the case, traps were probably effective after all.

Nets, birdlime, electrified floors, stun floors, and so on.

Also, a roar that sealed magic power didn’t sound bad either.

That was the one I’d taken during Antonio’s exam finals.

For some reason, I’d managed to Observation that one, too.

Had it been an undead-specific magic skill?

Normally, you couldn’t Observation something like a unique skill, but maybe this had been more like an ordinary magic skill?!

It had been insanely intense, but… how should I put it—was it some kind of “basic etiquette” skill undead picked up?

When I found it in my skill list, I’d gotten a little depressed.

Still, I should set that up too.

I could prepare it now, and I’d also embedded protection magic into the others’ bracelets, so even if I used it, it wouldn’t cause any particular harm to allies.

I didn’t want to use landmines if I could help it.

I could build in a safety device that identified mana signatures, but it would be a problem if a child got caught in the blast, even by accident.

This was, at least on paper, a kindergarten.

It couldn’t be helped.

I’d go with nonlethal traps.

Ideally, I wanted to capture Rick alive and interrogate him.

Well, all of our landmines could be recovered via homing, and we could manage them by the serial numbers recorded on the magic PC, so there was absolutely no way we’d leave any behind like on Earth.

Even so, as an effective option, I’d at least make some lethal mines too.

They might be useful for something.

I’d prepared all kinds of explosive sections as well, from magical explosions to ordinary chemical explosives.

I’d even made nonlethal ones that released tear gas or mustard gas when stepped on.

Those couldn’t be used until after the little ones evacuated, though.

Beastfolk had sensitive noses and eyes.

Like that, I stuffed in so many physical and magical traps with individual identification codes to prevent friendly fire that it was almost ridiculous.

Since they were ideas from Earth, no matter how sneaky Rick was, it probably wouldn’t be possible for him to see through everything on the first try.

If anything, the only concern was that “super-sense” type of thing—but we were on equal footing there.

At the very least, I believed there was no way I’d lose at that to someone who’d lived by sacrificing other people’s lives to survive, when I’d used mine for decades since my Earth days.

In my case it wasn’t an “ability,” it was a “being,” so it wasn’t even some fancy super-sense.

My own built-in ESP was, at best, around average.

Using that too, I judged what would or wouldn’t work, and selected trap types and placements.

It was the process of deciding—by the feel of the Seventh Sense—“Rick can be taken down with this. OK.”

This wasn’t absolute either, but the odds of him getting caught were high.

If he tripped even one thing, that filthy survivor would surely slow down, and we’d be able to pinpoint his location.

That was when I’d take him out.

And to be thorough, if I had time, I planned to go hunt him myself.

Damn it—if only I could put a marker on him, this would be over instantly.

If I didn’t care about it becoming terrorism, I could probably finish him with an ultra-long-range bombardment linked to the Radar MAP, trading for increased mana consumption due to distance amplification.

Precision sniping was impossible, though.

From far away, the MAP became rough and imprecise.

Both the firing point and target point had to be marked on the MAP.

It was an attack method meant for fixed targets like cities and buildings that didn’t move.

If I were to do it, it wouldn’t be like missiles from an unmanned strike aircraft—it’d be more like crudely dropping a mountain-erasing super-bomb from a heavy bomber.

But terrorism was, obviously, bad.

After all, I wasn’t a terrorist.

I was a kindergarten principal.

But for some reason, even when I ran my usual searches, that bastard never showed up on the MAP.

Did he have some special, scummy unique skill?

Given his personality, it wasn’t impossible.

Because that was exactly what unique skills were like.

At this rate, there was a chance even the detection-type traps I made might be useless.

I’d better prepare thoroughly.

This was supposed to be a big sting operation to capture an S-rank adventurer, but somehow I’d gone into “set traps like I’m catching sparrows or rabbits” mode instead.

After that, I’d thrown myself into “evacuation drills.”

We actually practiced going to each safe house using teleportation magic.

At first, everyone had been scrambling and it had been a mess.

Good thing we did evacuation drills.

The little brats had all been squealing and bouncing around, got insanely excited, and ended up utterly exhausted…

Come on, Rick.

Let’s finally settle this already.

I’d made plenty of trips to the Empire’s royal capital too, but there was no sign of anyone who looked like Rick.

Same with Balan.

S-ranks, the lot of them…

Well, to be fair, I also had a powerful concealment skill, so hiding was one of my specialties.

Unfortunately, I was basically holed up here, so that specialty wasn’t much use this time.

My concealment skill—something I’d had from the start—should even be able to hide my location from someone with the same ability as me.

Could it be that Rick was already lying low inside the Albatross Kingdom?

They said Rick was the one likely to come, and Balan probably wasn’t working with him, so Balan himself might still be in the Empire.

And so the days passed, and Japan was probably around the time of Obon by then.

Not long after that, one day—

A light alarm sound rang in my head like a wristwatch hourly chime, and it woke me in the middle of the night.

It was 2 a.m., but someone had broken through the third perimeter line placed on the outermost edge of our security net.

This place was originally on the outskirts of Adros, with basically only this kindergarten sitting by itself.

Adros wasn’t a huge metropolis like the Royal Capital to begin with.

No normal person would be coming to me at this hour.

Even the adventurers back from the labyrinth would be drunk and asleep at the inn.

They wouldn’t be wandering around these outskirts in the middle of the night—there weren’t even places to drink or stay.

Yeah.

I knew.

Not by logic—I just knew.

So he’d finally come…

As arranged, I went to wake everyone.

I’d told the night sentries to pretend they saw nothing.

The night-shift guards had already taken their positions too.

Countless airborne stealth-mobility surveillance cameras began moving in silence, and video started appearing on a rough, large PC monitor made as an enlarged copy of the central security control room.

The observers, newly posted to their stations, switched between camera feeds and searched for the intruder with eyes peeled.

The enemy had been using stealth, but I found them with my search.

I notified the control room of their position.

They came in a total of five.

Once they entered the building, we picked them off one after another using stun mode on our magic guns.

It looked like tranquilizing wild animals that had broken into a building packed with surveillance cameras and sensors.

The control room had been guiding the security adventurers via a party-chat smartphone.

We bound the captured enemies tightly.

I teleported them over to the Glass Garden.

Then we kept going and waited to see what the opponent would do.

Only the staff had been awakened.

The children’s section was magically isolated from sound and impacts, and physically separated by thick, reinforced walls, so the commotion wouldn’t disturb their dreams.

There were even orichalcum plates embedded in walls and pillars.

And of course, we’d layered shields and barriers tightly like the A-rank exam venue.

The children trusted the adults, probably dreaming happy dreams right now.

If possible, I didn’t want to let someone like Rick disrupt that precious time.

I’d reinforced the walls by pouring in absurd levels of mana as if I were casting God-type magic, so even an Earth-made bunker buster probably wouldn’t leave a scratch.

The surroundings were so silent it surpassed the silence of night itself.

No one moved.

Only one red dot showed on the radar.

I watched it carefully.

For now, I wouldn’t do anything rash.

If I could confirm it was Rick himself, I planned to kill him immediately.

A man everyone called crafty wasn’t going to come strolling in head-on.

Most likely, this red dot was someone else.

But even though they were approaching this boldly, how were they fooling my detection?

It was possible that all the traps that only activated upon sensing an enemy had been nullified too.

What he was using wasn’t some high-level skill like my own “super-detection nullification.”

As usual, I knew it without logic.

Rick was probably suppressing his killing intent and presence down to almost zero.

He was likely suppressing it so thoroughly he didn’t even appear as a red dot on the radar at this close range.

Maybe that kind of thing had been honed into a skill through training.

If so, the fact he could pull that off was exactly why he was S-rank.

What a pain.

Still, if I could crush him here, nothing would be better.

If I carelessly acted against the red dot on the radar, that could create an opening for the real one to exploit.

So I wouldn’t lift a finger from my side.

I saw him.

I appraised immediately.

His name was Roberto, huh.

As expected, this wasn’t Rick.

Nothing abnormal… no—explosive mana, a swelling sensation, and a blinding flash.

This was—

It was a kind of ESP sensation.

I’d experienced it once before.

A waking-dream-like vision that turned into reality right after.

I wrapped his entire body in an ultra-strong barrier, then shouted into the party-chat smartphone.

“He’s going to explode. And Rick will come in under cover of that! Everyone, put on your sunglasses!”

Yes, we’d already issued sunglasses for exactly this possibility.

Because I’d thought the enemy might pull something like a flash grenade.

Why did I think that?

Because I had magic like that myself, of course.

The next instant, the man was blown to pieces in spectacular fashion.

Flames and a blinding flash—like a human lantern—hit us, but I kept my eyes shut and shielded myself with my arm, so I retained my vision.

And at the same time, Rick attacked from behind me, his presence completely erased.

The others couldn’t move because they’d lost the enemy.

Or rather, the enemy in front had exploded, and on top of that they couldn’t lock onto Rick.

Normally, they wouldn’t be able to stop his strike.

The bastard—just as expected, or maybe worse—he wasn’t triggering my traps for some reason.

What an absurd man.

He seemed to be nullifying the traps—made from first-time, Earth-derived knowledge he shouldn’t even know existed—somehow.

Maybe he was a thief-type adventurer with a special concealment skill.

Or I’d even believe he came from an assassin guild.

That was how suspicious he felt.

Judging by the ruthless methods he used as standard practice, it was more than plausible.

Damn it, Rick.

He was way more dangerous than I’d thought!

Among my worst-case scenarios, he was almost as bad as a teleportation-magic user.

But I’d been watching him properly.

With my radar skill.

Someone who’d been hiding with high-level stealth, then turned hostile and attacked, couldn’t possibly fail to appear on the radar.

And behind me, as if protecting my back, an airborne stealth-mobility unit had deployed something.

It was a “Kasumi Net.”

Rick got caught in it perfectly.

Then another layer came down from behind and sealed him in.

This was a special mana net I’d made.

It was a thin net designed to be hard to see even for people who could sense mana, made from mana threads kneaded and formed into filament.

I’d also applied stealth to the net’s own mana, just in case.

And because the way I poured mana into it was no joke, a sneaky adventurer like him could never tear it.

It wrapped his whole body and clung from both front and back.

When two layers combined, they fused together perfectly flat.

A fully wrapped sandwich structure.

And if I covered that with a thicker, tougher mana net—one that was plainly visible—it became perfect packaging.

No, rather than packaging, it was more like the fate of a waffle or steamed bun being pressed inside a metal waffle iron.

Heh-heh-heh, Mr. S-rank Reaper.

Go on—try escaping this rare-visitor special, double-layered, premium mana net if you can.

He was immobilized like he’d been vacuum-sealed.

Because it was an elastic mesh, he couldn’t brute-force tear it either.

This was as troublesome as that hot-melt shower.

I had successfully poached an S-rank adventurer with the Kasumi Net.

According to appraisal, he was Rick von Asperald, Count, S-rank Adventurer.

So it really was him.

Now, even if I said I’d “take him out,” I actually couldn’t kill him.

He was an official noble of the Empire.

If I used that as material, it could spark a dispute between the two countries and give the enemy a pretext for invasion.

I’d already thought through what to do with him.

But there was something I wanted to interrogate him about first.

“Hey. You’re Rick, right. There’s one thing I want to ask. Where were you, and what were you doing all this time? I searched everywhere and couldn’t find you at all. And then you suddenly showed up here.”

“Hmph! You still don’t get it? First of all, you’ve already met me. You idiot.”

“What?!

T-that’s impossible!”

I desperately searched my memory, but I had nothing like that.

“Heh. Was it good?”

Huh?

At my puzzled face, he pasted a satisfied smile onto his lips.

“I’m asking whether the okonomiyaki I grilled was good. That was quite the dish. Balan said you were probably a rare visitor. Okonomiyaki—was that the taste of your homeland, and the homeland of this country’s founding king?”

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I got it!

Damn it.

He was the guy grilling okonomiyaki at the stall during the summer festival!

He’d waited for a chance to attack while training at street stalls in this city—what a bastard.

I hadn’t recognized him because he’d been in disguise.

What was he, Lupin?

No wonder he wasn’t in the Empire even when I searched.

And for some reason, the Seventh Sense didn’t warn me at times like that.

So it had been enjoying itself and kept quiet on purpose!

Back then, Rick probably hadn’t intended to attack, either.

This was why “that thing inside me” was such a pain.

Damn it—his okonomiyaki had been insanely good.

I’d praised it to the skies.

Rick must’ve been having a great time with that.

S-so frustrating…